Naomi.
Self-indulgence, sex parties, and red flags in dating profiles.
My name is not Naomi. It’s a nom de plume to protect my identity. Though names and identifying details have been changed, all the stories in Gen XXX are true. My anonymity means that I rely on word of mouth to grow my reader base, so if you’re intrigued by what you’re reading, please do share with friends and consider becoming a paid subscriber. (Upgrading to paid means that you get exclusive access to my “Saturday posts”: bimonthly Q&As about sex with female creators and thinkers in my cohort. Here’s a recent one.)
It’s official: Astrid is going to take over my Bumble account. (Context here.) On Monday, we make a plan to meet at Figaro on Vermont for a mid-afternoon catch-up over coffee.
I’m already in a sidewalk seat when she arrives. I notice that Astrid is glowing, though she says I’m the one who looks beautiful.
I don’t feel beautiful. I feel tired and low energy. Later that day, Margot will send me an IG post explaining that many people are currently going through a “Descension,” described as a disorienting, “integration” phase that’s accompanied by symptoms like “low energy, emotional flatness or a vague sense that ‘nothing’s clicked yet.’” (I guess I’m really leaning into this astrology thing.)
I give Astrid the basics on my experiences playing with Hinge and Bumble. I explain that I get very few likes on Hinge, and that, although my “hit” rate on Bumble is much, much higher, the quality of the men there is also low. I am passive on the apps, I explain, and I don’t take the time or initiative to like men’s profiles — I just respond to the likes that come my way. This is a defense mechanism, I suspect. Or just plain laziness.
I’m interested to see what happens when Astrid takes over my Bumble profile. I wonder if she and I have similar tastes; if she’s as superficial and looks-obsessed as I am. I ask her what sorts of things give her pause when reading a man’s profile.
Astrid says doesn’t like to see women in a man’s lead profile photo, or when all the photos are selfies. (This suggests he has no friends or social life.) Sunglasses in every image are a red flag — he doesn’t want to be seen, she explains — and photographs taken by a professional photographer also set off alarm bells. (The account might be fake, or he might be a little too superficial.) Astrid also doesn’t like it when men describe themselves as “not political” — for her, that also means they’re not feminists, among other things. Pass.
I tell her I have my own list of red flags:
Photos taken while sitting in a car. (Lazy.)
Bathroom selfies. (Gross.)
Gym selfies. (Thirsty.)
Hand gestures. (Corny.)
Fancy cars. (Tacky.)
Burning Man. (Irritating.)
Machu Picchu. (Predictable.)
Photo filters. (Insecure.)
Mention of “drama.” (Immature.)
“Moderate” politics. (MAGA.)
Dead fish. (Unnecessary.)
Astrid and I also share a revulsion for profiles that feature what she calls “The Face.” “The Face” is the expression some men make in selfies where they purse or pucker their lips to one side and cock their heads as if to say, “I’m just so wacky and accessible!”
(Note: “Puckered lips” are not to be confused with “fish lips.” The former look like an anus, whereas the latter are more, shall we say, labial.)
Anyway, “The Face” is annoying and stupid-looking and it’s particularly rampant on Bumble among white men over the age of 35 who wear glasses and are in creative professions. Someone should tell these guys to cut it out already.
Astrid scrolls through my Bumble account and swats most of the remaining men in my “likes” queue away, even the ones that I’ve kept for further consideration. (She doesn’t like one guy because he has a picture of himself performing spoken word. Another guy is too young.)
I suddenly feel less discerning than I thought I was. Though I’m probably just as racist. As I explain to Astrid, I’ve got some deep-seated racial biases that come to the fore when I’m scrolling through men on dating apps, biases that reveal ugly truths about who I am and what I find attractive.
I’m ashamed to admit this to her, of course, but I do it anyway. I figure that Astrid needs to know about my biases, not because she should enable them while taking over my Bumble account but because maybe she shouldn’t.
It’s 4:30 and Figaro is getting busy, so we finish up our coffees and wander into Skylight Books, where I browse through a bunch of novels and memoirs, most of them written by women. Astrid and I stop in front of a shelf with new paperback copies of All Fours. I tell Astrid that I enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it.
“I don’t know whether I like Miranda July, or hate her, or if I’m just jealous of her,” Astrid says.
“I think I’m mostly jealous,” I say.
Max calls me from the car on her way to a benefit in San Francisco. She wants to know how my “heart” is. I tell her I’m not sure what she means. “I mean Nico,” she says.
“Oh, I’m okay,” I tell her. “I think about him all the time but I’m not aching for him, just anxious.”
“Sometimes those can be one and the same,” she says.
What I don’t tell Max is that last week I went onto ChatGPT, Margot’s favorite AI therapist, and posed the following question:
“I just ended an obsessive, addictive relationship with a man with whom I had an intense digital sexual affair but who would never meet me in person due to the fact that he is married with children. I am upset about it and want to know how to approach the withdrawal I am feeling and the deep longing I will have for him.”
ChatGPT tells me, a little dramatically, that it’s “really sorry you’re going through this.”
“Navigating withdrawal after an intense, digital-only affair like this can be challenging because it combines emotional attachment with the confusion of the digital space, where boundaries can feel more blurred and less tangible,” it explains. “Healing from this type of emotional attachment takes time, and it’s okay to take it one day at a time. You're working through both the grief of the relationship and the longing for something that wasn’t fully realized.”
I ask it a few follow-up questions:
“Do you think he will think of me?”
“This digital affair has been going on for three years, with stops and starts. But he always reached out to me to reignite it. Will he do so again?”
“How can I restrain myself from reaching out to him?”
“Do you think that he is happy in his marriage?”
“Is a digital-only affair really an affair?”
I feel ridiculous even making such inquiries, but I’m also fascinated to see how the AI will respond.
It’s Tuesday morning and a guy named “Geoff” has just liked my Hinge profile. He has responded positively to my list of “simple pleasures,” which include nature, music, friends and literature. He also likes my hair.
“Geoff” is bearded and cute and Midwestern and an empty nester. He’s politically progressive, and is quick to warn conservative women looking at his profile to please “move along.” He’s also apparently a Buddhist.
“Jesus and the Dali Lama are socialists, these are facts,” he writes.
I note the misspelling of “Dalai.”
Even though Geoff has not one but two selfies taken in his car and says he’s an “entrepreneur,” I don’t swipe away. I like that he says he’s a feminist. I like his thick brown hair. (I’m not so sure I believe he’s six feet tall.) I like that he appears to be traveling the country in a motorhome. (“This is my year for travel,” his profile explains.)
I send screengrabs of his profile to Astrid to get her take. Might as well start early.
“I mean, part of me says ‘too good to be true,’” she texts. “Part of me thinks if he's actually this wonderful, he might be insufferable. (Are we still allowed to shop at Whole Foods on occasion? Are you radical, Geoff, and also reasonable?) All of me says it's worth finding out.”
“I’m surprised you like this guy,” I say. “Only because he says he’s an entrepreneur and has so many selfies.”
“Ha,” Astrid responds. “But I want that RV life.”
I don’t know what life I want. At least with regards to love and sex. I’ve been doing this newsletter for about five months now, and I feel no closer to understanding what drives my desire — besides the desire to be desired — or the direction in which I want my personal life to head.
Max thinks I want to be in a relationship, but I tell her I’m not so sure. The fact that I’m on both a sex app and more conventional dating apps underscores that I have competing interests. Though I’m not sure why I think they’re in competition with one another. Do I really have to choose between sex and love? If so, why?
I like to think that I should lean into the uncertainty. When I first began this Substack, I saw it as a way to give myself a creative outlet with which to share — and synthesize — my experiences as a single woman of a certain age.
Back then, of course, there was a flurry of activity. Lots of dates, some of them good. A fair amount of sex, some of it bad. Intrigue. Annoyances. Obsessions.
But there are only so many men I match with, and even fewer that I want to sleep with, and, right now, I’m feeling old. Sometimes I just can’t summon the energy to get excited about a guy.
This, of course, does not make for interesting stories.
What does make for interesting stories, say my friends, are feelings. Not that I’m particularly good at those, either. Though people respond to my emotional revelations with positive reinforcement, I feel hesitant to push myself in these more difficult directions, either because I’m bored with my feeling states or because I don’t always understand them. Or myself, for that matter.
I also question not just what I write about, but how. Am I leaning too much into some things and glossing over others? Should I be more explicit? Less? Do I obscure people’s identities enough? Am I funny? Am I smart? Am I pathetic? Am I honest? Do other women relate to what I have to say? Am I a narcissist? Is writing this Substack self-indulgent? Obscene?
It’s interesting, writing under a nom de plume. In some ways, it’s much easier, or more interesting, to “be” Naomi than to be myself: When I’m writing this newsletter it can sometimes feel like I’m inhabiting a separate character.
Using a nom de plume also forces me to occupy a liminal space between object and subject. I am both “Naomi” and “Not Naomi.” Of course, the “Not Naomi” part of me is so much more complex than the woman I channel in this space, even though, as I always say at the top of every post, all of the stories here are true. For one thing, “Not Naomi” thinks about things other than sex, and isn’t always obsessed with a ghost named Nico.
But I can’t let too much be known about “Not Naomi.” I need to be careful, both for my sake and others’. And so, for example, I hesitate to reveal that one of my most beloved friends and I got into a fight a few months ago and are no longer speaking. I can’t explain what I do to make money, or what I look like, or say much about my favorite hobbies.
Maybe no one cares about that stuff. Which is okay. More than okay, even. To be honest, it would be a bit of a relief.
I might be going to a sex party soon. Not sure. I wanted to go to one with Antoine while he was here, but I couldn’t seem to make it happen. If I end up attending this party, I’ll probably go solo, which scares me a bit. I don’t want to be standing in the corner of the room like a creep, watching people fuck, but I also don’t know that I’ll want to throw myself into the mix.
Maybe I’ll ask the high school art teacher to join me.
My only experience with sex parties took place a long time ago — back in the late 1990s. The party was planned by a friend of my friend Karen, and was hosted in a run-down walkup somewhere in the West Village. Karen and I arrived at the apartment together, but I left by myself. She got bored, and I got drunk, and, at around one in the morning, I found myself ass-up on a mattress on a bedroom floor, getting fucked from behind by a beautiful young guy who was about my age.
I remember how sexy that guy was — thick dark hair, baggy linen pants, lithe torso — and how good he was at sex. I remember that there were other people watching and engaging. (I may have touched a breast or two.) I remember that, about ten minutes after the young guy and I started having sex, the room began to spin and I had to sit up to quell the feeling of nausea rising in my stomach. I’d had too much red wine. Back then, I often had too much red wine.
I left the party without saying goodbye, pulling my Vivienne Tam slip dress back down over my ass and thighs and stumbling to a pizzeria on 7th Avenue to get something with which soak up all the alcohol. Then: A taxi home to my shithole apartment in Brooklyn and a raging hangover the next morning.
The party hostess emailed me a few days later to make sure I was okay.
This time around, I don’t plan on drinking much, if at all. I’d like to think that I’m old enough to calm my nerves without the assistance of alcohol. I also assume that the “sex” part of the party won’t begin immediately, that people will mill about for a while before someone takes the initiative and pulls someone else’s cock out and falls to their knees.
This is what happened at that party in the 90s. One minute, people were hanging out in the kitchen, snacking from a cheese and meat plate and the next minute there was a blow job right in front of the refrigerator.
As for what I might wear, I’m thinking thick black eyeliner, neutral-colored lipstick, and hair pulled back in a braid. Sexy, but not trying too hard. Oh, and maybe I’ll wear that Vivienne Tam dress again. I still have it. And I’m pretty sure it fits.
Did you know that the “hero” images in each newsletter are based on colors of MAC lipsticks from the 1990s? No? Now you do. My designer feels they’re a delightful nod to Gen X women. I agree.